Gail Johnson, LMSW, ACSWMore Than the Mind and Body Can Bear: Trauma is just that—more than mind and body can bear without causing disruption of our lives. We have finally come to recognize the trauma of our returning veterans, survivors of natural disasters, crashes, domestic violence, deaths of loved ones and friends. These large shocks to the human mind-body system are BIG SHOCKS—Big “T” Traumas.

What has not been adequately addressed is the accumulation of “small t” traumas. You may have even experienced a week that included:

Reassignment at work

A recent move

Starting back to school

Disagreements with significant others or children

Having or adopting a new child

A traffic ticket

A vacation

A holiday

Or even “littler” things:

Your debit card won’t swipe

You can’t find your keys

You didn’t get enough sleep

The power went off

You are stuck in traffic

All these are sneakier, small “t” traumas: “little” things that pile up into BIG heaps when there is no time or means of processing them.

So how much is too much? The answer is: it’s all relative. Your personal capacity, the time of the year or month, amount of help that is forthcoming, time span between events, all can contribute to a pileup of stress that can turn “little t trauma” into a bigger stressor than a single BIG T trauma.How does trauma finally get our attention?

Maybe you have already figured it out: your BODY keeps the score. We even have figurative language that bears this out—that job (or boss) is a real “pain in the neck” “my heart aches” “I feel it in my gut”​What to do? Both BIG T and small t trauma deserve our attention. That is how they are resolved. We ignore this imbalance in our lives at a cost to our health and well-being, especially when their effects don’t disappear. Both kinds are treatable, even when the trauma happened a long time ago or just yesterday. Mind and body deserve a break – treat them well.